Hackers Knock Out Mega

[Andy Chalk]

Hackers Knock Out Mega

The successor to Megaupload is under threat from both the authorities and the anarchists.

Kim Dotcom opted to go to Gabon for his upcoming Mega service in order to give it the catchy Me.ga domain name, but now it seems that he might have to reconsider the plan. Gabon's Minister of Communications Blaise Louembe announced yesterday that in order to "protect intellectual property rights" and "fight cyber-crime effectively," the government would prevent Dotcom from using the domain.

"I have instructed my departments... to immediately suspend the site www.me.ga," Louembe said. "Gabon cannot serve as a platform or screen for committing acts aimed at violating copyrights, nor be used by unscrupulous people."

Dotcom said in response that Mega has an "alternative domain" to fall back on but also accused the U.S. government and French multimedia giant Vivendi of being involved in the seizure, tweeting, "The reach of the US & Vivendi: Gabon Minister announced Me.ga domain will be suspended. Calls cloud storage site cyber crime." The top-level domain of Gabon is controlled by Gabon Telecom, which was revealed last week to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vivendi.

Adding to Dotcom's headaches is a group of hackers calling itself Omega, which denounced him as part of a corrupt system and took over the Me.ga domain, redirecting it to its own site. It has since gone offline.

"We're pure in a diogenist way, we're the true pirates, the true anarchists. Kim Dotcom is only taking advantage of us all, he is a megalomaniac with lawyers here to take advantage of us all, the nobodies, the artists he wants to profit from," the group told TorrentFreak. "Kim Dotcom is not better nor worse than Universal. He himself is an industry, only here to pollute."

The group also offered to sell the domain to Dotcom's enemies for "millions of dollars" and promised to donate ten percent of the sale price to Forum des Jeunes du Gabon [Gabon Youth Forum] if Universal Music Group buys it.

Sources: Phys.org [http://torrentfreak.com/me-ga-hackers-were-real-pirates-well-sell-dotcoms-domain-to-universal-121107/]



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[AzrealMaximillion]

This is absolutely hilarious on so many levels. They talk down on Kim Dotcom for looking to make a profit, then threaten to sell the domain for "millions of dollars". Oh Irony.

 

[gigastar]

Yes, clearly its a surprise that Kim was going to have anything less than a hard time ressurecting his file sharing service.

Also i love the hypocrisy of the Omega hackers.

 

[Musicfreak]

Ugh I'm not sure who I give less of a shit about. The hackers with their lame ass releases and wannabe hero attitudes. Dotcom who's just trying to get another file sharing site up so he can make money. Or the US government who probably wants to make an example of dotcom.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

The group also offered to sell the domain to Dotcom's enemies for "millions of dollars" and promised to donate ten percent of the sale price to Forum des Jeunes du Gabon [Gabon Youth Forum] if Universal Music Group buys it.

Pretty big collectivist talk for a group that plans on keeping 90% of the money

 

[IamLEAM1983]

This is sad on so many levels.

Dotcom probably wouldn't bat an eyelash if his encryption key-based service got circumvented, which I'm fairly sure it will. Before long, Mega will be just as infested with malware, fake uploads, cracked releases and repackaged torrents as Megaupload was.

Omega is being hugely hypocritical. This isn't much more than a basic DDOS and domain redirection, and they're asking for "millions"? They then have the gall to say they're going to give 10% of these earnings to a cause? ONLY ten percent?!

So on one hand, we have a loaded and self-important jackass who's only looking to comply with regulations so the Man gets off his back long enough for him to resume his luxury yacht-plus-babes lifestyle, and on the other we have would-be anarchists who think that redirecting a domain makes them champions of the people, and who have the nerve to ask for money.

Then there's most Western authorities, who tend to get behind the SOPA and PIPA bandwagons precisely to combat things like this - only they're doing so with excessive measures that end up justifying approaches similar to Dotcom's or Omega's.

Copyright needs to die a slow and horrible death. The day that'll happen, we won't have any need for Dotcom's schemes, or Torrent trackers used as pirate distribution networks, or tryhards invested with a mission like Omega.

 

[NLS]

Though I don't agree with the 90% thing, I must say I support them in their stance against Dotcom's profiting off piracy. One thing is the industry's heavy profiting model yet low income to the actual content creators, another thing is piracy which doesn't even give a dime to the original creators. But when you combine those two, lots of money for yourself, zero for original artist, I say it's wrong.

 

[ResonanceSD]

The group also offered to sell the domain to Dotcom's enemies for "millions of dollars" and promised to donate ten percent of the sale price to Forum des Jeunes du Gabon [Gabon Youth Forum] if Universal Music Group buys it.

Pretty big collectivist talk for a group that plans on keeping 90% of the money

It's because all property is theft. Except mine.

 

[WanderingFool]

Not quite sure whats happening here, but I know it has to be funny as hell...

 

[The Great JT]

Two things.

1. I want to name a Pathfinder character Blaise now. Maybe a fire-based Sorceror.
2. Props to Gabon for standing up to that. The only win if we let them.

 

[Therumancer]

Seems like a rat fight to me, this seems to be between Kim and Videndi who are both bad in their own way, there is no real "good guy" here as they both want to exploit us in their own way, so it's hard to care. It's pretty much my stance on pirates vs. the media industry in general, it's like gang bangers fighting the mob, whomever wins bad guys run the show and we wind up losing one way or another.

I can't praise Gabon for taking a stand if they were manipulated/bought by Vivendi as Kim implies, because they really just acted for what they saw as the greater benefactor as opposed to any kind of principle.

 

[vxicepickxv]

No matter who wins, we have to hear absolute crap.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

This is like a Bad-Guy Battle Royale. Am I the only one who wants to see them ALL somehow lose? (And don't try to paint Omega in some sort of "anarchist good guys bucking the system" light with me. "We'll sell it for millions and donate ten percent" is NOT some populist Robin Hood creed.)

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

The group also offered to sell the domain to Dotcom's enemies for "millions of dollars" and promised to donate ten percent of the sale price to Forum des Jeunes du Gabon [Gabon Youth Forum] if Universal Music Group buys it.

Pretty big collectivist talk for a group that plans on keeping 90% of the money

and that's only if Universal Music Group is the buyer, if the above quote is accurate.

Such saints, aren't they?

I'm more amused that they think they can steal/hack a domain name and sell it in the first place XD
Who in their right mind would buy it from them, considering how easy it would be to seize back or the pretty much 100% likelihood that it would be shut down, illegally sold or otherwise.

Guys, maybe you haven't heard, but that's not quite how these things work. it's not like selling stolen goods that can be secreted away on some black market... it's a domain name.

 

[viranimus]

Just plain wrong.

Honestly... what I do not get is the logic behind this Omega group. First I have ever heard of them, and they are lashing out at dotcom... because he is not a real hacker?

Im sorry but to me, this sounds more like this Omega group is a group of US gov sponsored hackers that have been set to purpose of continuing to inhibit MEGAs ability to defend itself.

Seriously given the service MegaUpload provided in cloud based storage, Myself and most of the tech oriented circles I am familiar with saw MU as a amiable service and liked its functionality. They offered one thing that no other "locker" type site offers. One time charge, lifetime unlimited storage. Sure, Roughly the equivalent to 400 USD is a lot of money, but what they did is showed the hypocrisy of other cloud locker services in showing that service is in fact not actually worth what almost every other service tries to charge for it, which is absolutely outrageous.

So I really have a hard time believing that tech oriented hackers would go out of their way to attack dotcom, when the service he tried to offer was one a lot of hackers do like/want, and to do so with little reason other than "yur nawt a REEL hakur, m8!" seems entirely too orchestrated to be legitimate.

 

[Nurb]

Louembe said. "Gabon cannot serve as a platform or screen for committing acts aimed at violating copyrights, nor be used by unscrupulous people."

What a bunch of pricks!
It's not intended to be used for piracy, but they dump it anyway because someone MIGHT use it for file sharing? If that's the case, they need to ban the sale of all blank media since they can and do hold copyrighted materials. I hope Kim continues the fight against this over-reach of government at the bidding of business

 

[Your Gaffer]

First of all the "hackers" are probably paid for by the same groups pursuing legal action against him.

Second of all how hilarious is it that a site that is not even operational yet is having its domain seized because it may possibly sometime in the future promote piracy?

Ludicrous, just ludicrous.

I just hope these corrupt officials seize the domains of Carbonite and Google Drive.